The Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI) records a photometric
white-light response of the interplanetary medium from Earth
over most of the sky in near real time. In the first two
years of operation the instrument has recorded the inner
heliospheric response to several hundred CMEs, including the
May 28, 2003 and the October 28, 2003 halo CMEs. In this
preliminary work we present the techniques required to
process the SMEI data from the time the raw CCD images
become available to their final assembly in photometrically
accurate maps of the sky brightness relative to a long-term
time base.

Processing of the SMEI data includes integration of new data
into the SMEI data base; a conditioning program that removes
from the raw CCD images an electronic offset ("pedestal")
and a temperature-dependent dark current pattern; an
"indexing” program that places these CCD images onto a
high-resolution sidereal grid using known spacecraft
pointing information. At this "indexing" stage further
conditioning removes the bulk of the the effects of
high-energy-particle hits ("cosmic rays"), space debris
inside the field of view, and pixels with a sudden state
change ("flipper pixels").

Once the high-resolution grid is produced, it is reformatted
to a lower-resolution set of sidereal maps of sky
brightness. From these sidereal maps we remove bright stars,
background stars, and a zodiacal cloud model (their
brightnesses are retained as additional data products). The
final maps can be represented in any convenient sky
coordinate system. Common formats are Sun-centered
Hammer-Aitoff or "fisheye" maps. Time series at selected
locations on these maps are extracted and processed further
to remove aurorae, variable stars and other unwanted
signals. These time series (with a long-term base removed)
are used in 3D tomographic reconstructions.

The data processing is distributed over multiple PCs running
Linux, and, runs as much as possible automatically using
recurring batch jobs ('cronjobs'). The batch scrips are
controlled by Python scripts. The core data processing
routines are written in several computer languages: Fortran,
C++ and IDL.

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pphick@ucsd.edu